Gender als fantasie? Over identiteit als verhaal

Antigender ideologues argue that gender identity is a phantasy and that ‘sex’
is the rock bottom of who we are. Even some feminists take a ‘gender critical’
position. These thinkers oppose phantasy to reality and hold oversimplified
ideas about the embodiment of gender. I argue for an understanding of
gender in which imagination plays a role, but that does not have a simple
referent: gender as narrative. My inspiration is Ricoeur’s recently published
Lectures on Imagination (2024) and his ideas about narrative identity (1992).
Applying Ricoeur’s notion of productive imagination to gender, I argue that
gender is bodily and implies the stories of others, and that it pertains to a
person’s life story that may change over time. I end with asking why it are
only transgender people that in therapy are asked to tell their gender story. If
we would all tell that story, we would soon find out that every story differs.